Midnight Walk
by gryffinclaw-witch
Summary: Late on a June night after the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione and George have a conversation outside of the Burrow. One-shot.


It was almost July; if it were daytime, she wouldn't have needed the jacket she was wearing, but it was nearly eleven o'clock at night and once the temperature dropped, she did need it. The grass crunched beneath her feet with each step, and the moon shed light on the long, tall fields that surrounded the Burrow.

Hermione was alone in the low light of the kitchen. She had just come from upstairs, where Molly and Arthur were sleeping. While she rummaged through a drawer near the washbasin, her fringe fell over her eyes; she gracefully shoved it back behind her right ear and carried on with what she was doing.

She couldn't believe how much the Weasleys had changed. Mrs. Weasley kept it kempt and neat, but only because she didn't want to preoccupy herself with the thoughts of her dead son and friends. The Order of the Phoenix visited the house once, and only once, over a month ago, to inform the Weasleys about the itinerary—and that included the times and dates of each funeral, in case the family wanted to attend; concerns over where Ginny might be relocated for school the next year, in the unlikely case that Hogwarts could not be rebuilt in time; and what would become of the Order now that several of its members (especially Dumbledore) had died, and now that the war was over.

Hermione swallowed as she scanned the countertops. The Order had survived and won two separate Wizarding Wars. What a history for them. It was a feat about as impressive as Harry's unintentional victory over Voldemort as an infant.

Harry; sometimes she looked at him and could see that the Burrow was a place of refuge for him, more so than Hogwarts ever was. He was more resilient than most of the others in the household, in fact, perhaps because he was used to tragedies like this one.

Hermione stared at the kitchen table for a full minute after her eyes landed upon it. In the first couple of days after the Battle of Hogwarts, everybody was mostly keeping to themselves, only exposing themselves to one another at mealtimes. But even supper, usually the only time of day when each person was in the same room during the same hour, had become rushed and silent. Hermione sometimes dreaded it now. And, at every dinnertime, she thought that the members of her boyfriend's family were looking more disheveled than the dinnertime preceding it.

She couldn't find the torch she was looking for, so Hermione decided to check in the cupboard beneath the washbasin in the loo. After going down the corridor and turning into the loo, she quickly closed the wooden door behind her to avoid anybody noticing the light. It wasn't terribly late, but she wanted to prevent other people from being intrigued.

Right before she crouched on the floor to open the cupboard, Hermione caught sight of herself in the mirror above the washbasin. She gazed at herself for a while, and it seemed as though the longer she looked, the more details she noticed; she caught new freckles forming, and realised with dismay how large her pores were, and was relieved to see that the gash at the top of her forehead was finally almost completely healed. Hermione didn't think she looked any different than she did that morning, but she probably looked far different than she did in the week before the battle.

With a grimace Hermione lowered her eyes. Stooping to reach the cupboard, she shifted around the items in there—cleaning products, extra loo rolls. Towards the back of the cupboard she found the torch she had been looking for, and reached carefully around the pipe of the washbasin in order to take it out.

Hermione turned off the light and exited. Down the corridor and outside through the door near the kitchen . . . and she kept walking.

She used the torch once she was a short distance from the house. Aiming the beam so it made a medium-sized circle on the ground, and occasionally aiming the beam back towards the Burrow to check that nobody was trailing her, Hermione mostly only watched her feet as she moved along. Some of the tallest grasses tickled the skin of her neck as she brushed past, but she only pulled up her collar.

She had just begun to think about Ron for the eighth time that hour when she paused, stunned to see someone else standing tens of metres ahead, and she immediately considered turning round and returning to the safety of the house. It didn't look like a stranger, but she couldn't identify them from this far away. Cautious, and with hope that she wouldn't regret doing so, Hermione went closer.

She was behind the person, who stood slightly above her, on a small hill-like mound in the grass, adjacent to the pond. He was male, and definitely taller than she was anyway. Initially, she had a natural assumption that it was Fred, and then she felt horrified with herself for having the nerve to think such a thing.

Hermione stared for a couple more seconds, and wanted to say something, but before she could the person spun leisurely to face her. She felt foolish; she should have turned off the torch as soon as she got near to him.

"Hermione," said George with a slight note of surprise in his tone, but he was looking at her like he wasn't at all surprised to see her.

"I thought you were sleeping," she admitted, turning out the light and placing the torch on the grass. Then, with tightly crossed arms, Hermione walked up the hill against the wind. She stopped beside him.

George wasn't holding eye contact anymore. "No," he said. "I couldn't."

And Hermione knew why. "Oh."

George pulled one side of his mouth tight, and then glanced back at the torch. "Why'd you bother with that? The moon is really bright."

Hermione shifted her weight from one hip to the other. "I wasn't expecting it to be like this tonight."

The moon was indeed strong, but not in its fullest phase quite yet. For now, for a couple of minutes, George and Hermione were together beneath it, standing close but not too close, not as close as Ron typically stood to Hermione, and not talking. Hermione didn't even want to breathe too loudly.

"Have you spoken to Ron today?" George asked her, and at first she was taken aback, but fortunately the moonlight was shining upon her face at an angle that concealed her shock.

"Erm," she said, "no. I haven't." Not even at dinner, where they had been seated next to each other, their knees almost touching under the table, their elbows actually touching once, but that was only for a split second before Ron had moved his arm again.

"You're with my brother now, aren't you?" George went on, with a slight squint of one eye. Hermione nodded, but wasn't certain he'd noticed. He continued as if he had: "I knew it would happen, you know. Freddie knew it, too. And we would have told _you_ our opinions on the matter, except Ron hushed us every time. He didn't want us to ruin it, I guess." George was nodding slowly at the grass. "But I suppose there's no worrying about that anymore? It's all how it's supposed to be?"

Hermione smiled. "Yeah." Her smile then faded for a moment, as she licked her lips and glanced down at her hands. George didn't have to know the specific fact that she loved Ron more than she ever thought she would.

Finding it difficult to bear the silence, without anything to add, she raised her head and stuffed her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. "Well it's late, you see," she began, trying to find a sentence that could end the conversation quickly enough, but it only sparked amusement from George.

"Yeah," he agreed, looking up at the sky, pretending to notice the darkness for the first time, "I see that."

In her mind, Hermione wondered why she would even say such a thing as that. Not wanting to risk belittling herself further, she turned from the pond, and started on her way back to the Burrow.

"Oi," George called after a few moments, and Hermione stopped. She glanced over her shoulder to see him glancing over his. She shot him an expression of mixed curiosity and impatience, until he said what they were both waiting for.

"Be careful getting back, okay?" George gestured with his head in the general direction of the house. "It's easy to get lost."

Hermione gave a halfhearted scoff. "It's a clear footpath right there," she pointed out.

George shook his head, with—Hermione could have sworn she'd seen it—a roll of his eyes.

"You wouldn't believe how many times it's happened," he told her.

When he had nothing else to add, she continued walking on.

Inside, very much was silent. Hermione opened and shut the door and entered the kitchen, slipping her coat off and hanging it on the back of a chair. One light was turned on, over the stove, but it appeared as if nobody else had been in the room for a couple of hours, not since dinner. As she went in the other direction, ready to go upstairs, she overheard speaking from the next room. Hermione paused with one hand on the railing and peeked around the corner. Cross-legged and facing one another on the couch of the sitting room were Harry and Ginny. She hadn't noticed them before going outside, but they had probably been there. Now, they were struck in quiet conversation; Ginny wasn't talking much but when she did, she avoided Harry's gaze and kept twisting her fingers.

Hermione had seen a lot of that with them lately. With almost two months having passed since the final battle, Harry and Ginny each sought the company of the other; but that was it; Hermione never caught sight of them snogging or sneaking away. Once, several weeks ago, she and Harry and Ginny and Ron and George had all been together in that room, with Harry trying to lead a discussion as to what the next step would be now that the war was ended, but nobody put forth any attempt to discuss with him. That night offered the last remotely romantic exchange that Hermione witnessed between him and Ginny: when he spent the evening beside her on the sofa and, just before leaving rather indignantly, kissed her cheek to bid her goodnight. Now they only talked with each other, and sometimes not even that.

Hermione walked the flights of stairs to Ginny's room, changed into her pyjamas, and then re-turned down one level. She crept down the corridor, turned into Ron's room, and paused in the doorway.

Her shadow fell on the carpet and mirrored her, but she hardly paid attention to that. Ron hadn't been sighted awake since the morning; after a small meal, he went right back to his room to sleep again. No one had protested it, because many of them were tired themselves, including Hermione. Now, she watched how he was sprawled across the left side of his bed, laying on his right side, with only half of his red head on the pillow. It couldn't have been comfortable enough to fall asleep in that position. Somehow he had.

Every night in the first two weeks following the Battle of Hogwarts, Ron had allowed Hermione to sleep in his bed with him, for the comfort of them both. It was purely innocent. Early on, Percy had noticed and threatened to tell Molly, but never did. Now, nearly two months later, the act was done out of habit, and rarely observed by anyone else; Hermione was supposed to sleep in Ginny's room, but usually woke up in the mornings before Ginny did, and so her absence wasn't often noted. On days when Hermione slept later, she could rely on Ginny to assume that she was already down at the breakfast table, or taking a shower. That helped.

Hermione moved the door to be the way it had been before—not closed completely, but cracked open so a slit of light fell through. She maneuvered through the clutter on the floor (which wasn't as bad as it used to be, because recently Molly was nagging Ron to clean it up, and he obliged because it distracted his thoughts from a lot of everything else) and reached the bed, where she lifted the other side of the quilt with two fingers. She was making an effort not to wake Ron, but it happened.

"Good morning," she said to his hazy expression, in false cheerfulness. She slipped into the bed more quickly now, hoping he could go right back to sleep.

"Hermione," murmured Ron instead, squinting some so he could see her better, and he straightened himself out to give her more room. "Where've you been?"

Hermione shifted closer, a small risk, and pulled the sheets to cover her. On the wall behind Ron, she could almost see the sky beyond the curtained window, filled with stars that were dull despite being in the countryside, among the freshest air she had ever known.

"Just taking a walk."


End file.
